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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Red Bean Paste filling

As promised in
my wholemeal steamed Pau post, this post I will illustratehow to make homemade red bean paste. Red
bean paste is a common ingredient for Asian cuisine especially for Chinese and
Japanese cuisines. It is usually used as a filling ingredient for buns,
dumplings, desserts and confectionaries.

I know it is not difficult to source
ready-made red bean paste at bakery ingredients shop. In fact even when I was
in Auckland I could easily find it in most Asian groceries shops. However, the homemade
version always seems to taste better and feels
healthier, doesn’t it? J

In return to enjoy better quality and
healthier food we have to spend a little more time and hassle to prepare for
it. It is quite time consuming to cook
the dry red bean into its paste form. Normally you will need to soak the beans
for hours or even overnight before cooking to soften the beans. A quicker
alternative is to skip this stepis by
using a pressure cooker or a slow cooker.Cook until the red beans turn soft. To have very fine and smooth
texture, it is best to blend the cooked red bean puree until creamy form. Lastly,
cook it again with oil and sugar to transform it into smooth creamy red bean
paste that is ready for use.

For this trial, I used slow cooker to cook red
beans overnight, this has cut down my hassle in spending time to monitor the
red beans over stove. The whole process
took me more than 9 hours, but my actual working hours on blending, and stir
frying the bean puree into paste only took me around an hour.

As mentioned it was pretty time consuming to
get this paste done, but when you think of your loved ones getting to consume
homemade paste which is free from preservative and unknown additive, plus the
added benefits of adjusting the sweetness to your own preference, it all seems
to justify the effort.

Mid autumn festival is around the corner. Why
not give it a try to make your own red bean paste for the moon cake fillings to
enjoy a healthier red bean flvaour moon cakes? You can also try out Yam/Taro paste filling, and the traditional moon
cake recipe here.

Thanks for sharing this recipe :) Would like to try making this soon for mooncakes. I don't own a slow cooker, so will be using stove :p do u have any tips on how much water must I put in the pot if boil on stove?

Hi there:If using pot and cook over stove, make sure you soak overnight for the red beans first. I suppose you can just try to use fill up the water 1-2 inches above the beans and monitor on the simmering, you do not wish to have too much liquid coz you are making paste. Try with this ratio first and if you find too dry add hot water into it and simmer until the bean soft.